For me, the decision to retire early came not so much out of a focused plan at the age of 37. Instead it was the result of 2 health scares with people around me. My wife's brother had a heart attack at 35 and a dear friend had a brain aneurism at 34.

While our friend was still in the hospital we got together with friends and started talking about life and we asked the question "what would you do if you knew you would not live to be 40?". My wife and I both answered travel.

Today we are both 40 and are currently living our dream lives. I left my 20 year career in the software industry in order to live a simpler life and one that I felt matched who I am as a person. I had spent my entire life doing what I thought I was supposed to do - work hard, climb the corporate ladder, buy bigger and more expensive things. However, once we identified what we really wanted in life we put our minds towards how we could live it.

We sold everything we owned and in October 2010 we took off for a trip around the world. We have no plans to return and I cannot imagine ever going back to a conventional job or life. We are living our dream and loving every minute of it.

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Congratulations on your retirement and world travel. I envy you guys.
Would love to travel but DW hates to leave home. Tho I retired at 51, I felt great about it. I was just getting going at 40. Hard to put that in perspective.

Thank you all for your wonderful words of encouragement. I was delighted to find this site thanks to seeing Sarah's links to our website. I have been very focused on not spamming anyone and giving off the impression that was my goal in joining.

I just updated my profile with our Married with Luggage website link. I am looking forward to getting more involved in the forums and to getting to know you all more over time.

Lovely post, Warren. One thing that I think is interesting, because I consider your blog to be one of my sources of "dream porn" (no, not in a dirty way, Haha), is that I have some kind of (maybe nonexistant) line between the people who I meet here who want to quit work permanently and retire, either to travel or indulge in home-based hobbies, and the people who have an idea, as you and Betsy did, to do a "career break" and perhaps return to make enough money for a later retirement.

It seems to me that many career breakers never come back! Or at least they are so changed by the experience, as y'all have been, to reinvent "career" into something else entirely. I include in this category people who plan to work and travel, like Craig and Linda of the Indie Travel site.

Meanwhile, there are many of us around this board who are toiling away (ok, maybe I don't toil a whole lot, but you know) and wearing down our noses on the grindstone to pull the plug permanently, with no idea ever of returning to paid employment. We have super long-term goals for having a big cushion of investments for these long retirements, and will keep working (see the many "one more year" type threads) even after we could quit, just to feather the nest.

Is there really a difference, or am I just seeing a distinction where there is none?

__________________
“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it's worth watching.”
Gerard Arthur Way

It's been a long, long time since I have posted to ER site. Have been living happily in our retirement for five years now, spending 60% of our retirement budget on travel. Been to all 7 continents, 62 countries, 42 National Parks (of 58, at present).
Your world adventure is an inspiration. By all means, live life while you can, in good health, and looking forward to what's ahead. Looking back, you will enjoy memories of life rather than regrets of time given away.
Wishing you, and all who read this, wonderful adventures and Happy Trails!

Lovely post, Warren. One thing that I think is interesting, because I consider your blog to be one of my sources of "dream porn" (no, not in a dirty way, Haha), is that I have some kind of (maybe nonexistant) line between the people who I meet here who want to quit work permanently and retire, either to travel or indulge in home-based hobbies, and the people who have an idea, as you and Betsy did, to do a "career break" and perhaps return to make enough money for a later retirement.

It seems to me that many career breakers never come back! Or at least they are so changed by the experience, as y'all have been, to reinvent "career" into something else entirely. I include in this category people who plan to work and travel, like Craig and Linda of the Indie Travel site.

Meanwhile, there are many of us around this board who are toiling away (ok, maybe I don't toil a whole lot, but you know) and wearing down our noses on the grindstone to pull the plug permanently, with no idea ever of returning to paid employment. We have super long-term goals for having a big cushion of investments for these long retirements, and will keep working (see the many "one more year" type threads) even after we could quit, just to feather the nest.

Is there really a difference, or am I just seeing a distinction where there is none?

Excellent question. While there may be differences in our approaches I think the common thread is we all are interested in living more. We see that there is more to life than work and want to get there faster.

I believe the big difference, at least for us, is we dramatically changed our lifestyle and we did so as quickly as we could (2 years). We knew from the moment we made the decision that we needed to start living the life we dreamed about now as there were no guarantees we would be around in 10, 20, or 30 years. When we left we were 19 years from our "early retirement". Now we are living our dream and have no regrets at all.

The difference though is that we know we do not have enough money to live like this forever. However, we have reduced what we spend by 70%. Last year we spent $24,140 to live full time on the road. As a result I no longer need to make the level of income as before to keep up a lifestyle I did not want.

I do see there are differences in how we all get there. But in my mind going for your dream is what should make us all the same. I would love to see everyone around identify what is really most important in their lives and then make the changes to make it happen. If that makes me different, I'm OK with that

Excellent point Sarah, that always has me confused as well. I belong to the "tough it out, go flat out, until you can fully retire" camp, while DW seems to be in the "we can take it slow, and retire a little later" camp. Taking a break never quite occurred to us (I guess in India, it just isnt the done thing) Maybe Warren is right about taking the break now, but I am not sure if we are ready to pull the plug right-away. I do agree with the thought of going frugal, and we are doing our own little experiment to see how much of a % savings rate we can hit. Based on some of the numbers that I see in the US, I believe we can do much better here in India.

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